This article originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of ELLE.
The first question people ask after you've gone blond is whether you get more attention. What they mean is, Are men paying more attention to you? And the answer is yes. But what's really surprising is the reaction of women: Coloring one's hair is like a secret handshake into a world of feminine mystique. Once I started experimenting with the color of my hair—a journey that took me both six shades lighter and three shades darker than my "base" over the course of seven weeks—women began to share their own stories. They'd offer homemade mask recipes for mashes of avocado and olive oil; they'd talk about changing their hair for themselves alone ("everyone else can go to hell") and dye jobs gone horribly wrong. And I get it: Now, when I'm on the subway and I see telltale roots, I know how many hours their owner has spent in a salon, how expensive it was, what it takes to maintain. And I understand the rush that comes with changing how the world sees you.
But let's back up. I was born with the kind of face that encourages tourists to stop me for directions, which is to say I look familiar in a nonthreatening way. My long, thick, brown-with-the-slightest-wave hair was my crown jewel, yes, but it's never been particularly distinctive. This past year, I cut more than a foot off the bottom into a choppy chin-length bob. Change, I realized, can be really good.
Enter André Viveiros, master colorist at NYC's Serge Normant at John Frieda salon, who was responsible for, among others, Madonna's blond, Maggie Rizer's red—and Carolyn. Bessette. Kennedy. We plot a course around some of his most famous creations: We'll start with Amber Valletta's white-hot Versace-ad platinum, ease into a Kate Upton–channeling–Marilyn butter blond, turn things up with Karen Elson's electric red, and finish with a deep Malgosia Bela brown.
PLATINUM (ATTEMPT ONE)
Per Viveiros's directions, I don't wash my hair for a week, building up oil to protect my scalp from bleach. At the salon, he divides my hair into sections and painstakingly paints each one, then foils it until a silvery ruff wraps my cranium (the foils allow for a lower-strength bleach that will keep the damage to my hair as minimal as possible). The risk is real: The process of going platinum requires removing the color from the melanin in the hair shaft by softening the hair cuticle with bleach and dissolving the color molecules through a process called oxidation. I expect burning but don't feel much of anything—just ammonia fumes that make my eyes tear when I'm planted under the dryer hood. After about 20 minutes, Viveiros peels back the aluminum section by section. My brunette has become a sickly yellow. He massages purple-toned Clairol Professional conditioner into each processed section, then plastic-wraps it for about 10 minutes. We work our way through piece by piece like this for 10 hours. At 8 P.M., the salon closes. Rather than using a second bleach on my sensitive scalp, Viveiros paints on the faintest shading of light ash blond at my root and an allover golden glaze of color. It's not quite platinum, as originally planned, but rather, he says, "your three-year-old niece at the beach."
"You're blond," whispers his assistant. "Welcome to the world!" And suddenly everything looks different. Especially my skin tone. The next day, I pick up a color corrector to counteract my rosiness, a subdued taupe blush, and an icy pearlescent highlighter to play up my newfound pallor. Mascara gets piled on thick, and I can't stop marveling at how light my brown eyes suddenly appear. I'd thought that going blond would satisfy an itch, but make me look alien or tired. I hadn't anticipated loving it.
At work, the double takes are cartoonish. The mailwoman declares that I look exactly like Marilyn Monroe. At my dermatologist's, I hear that I'm a dead ringer for Taylor Swift. I meet a group of guy friends for lunch—each looks right at me, then away, before realizing it's me. "You look just like Khaleesi," says one. I begin to believe people can name only three blondes. In perhaps the highest praise, my brunette sister threatens to go blond herself. But two and a half weeks into this new self, I receive an email from Viveiros wondering when our next appointment is. I feel like I've taken a Maserati out for a test-drive—I'm ready to head for the hills, but the dealership wants it back.
PLATINUM (TAKE TWO)
This time, the process starts with a developer applied directly to my head with no protective foiling. I feel the burn. The fumes are so strong, I can hardly keep my eyes open. After 45 minutes of bleach, rinsing, and then toning with classic Clairol Professional Shimmer Lights, my hair is…translucent. I'd anticipated punky post–Café Society Kristen Stewart. Instead, I look fussy and foreign. I scuttle out the door to come to terms with the color, and Viveiros follows. He points out three men who have done double takes—one even did a 360. "Get ready," he tells me. "And report back."
Even an old soccer T-shirt seems hip with this hair. My best friend vows to go platinum, too—and then she actually does. At a sceney restaurant, the bartender asks my friend if I'm famous. Two hours after seeing the new me, the cute guy from my building texts to ask me on a date. We've lived in the same building for two years.
Though my hair still feels healthy, it has a thick, roughed-up texture from the bleach—which I love for the added volume, but which also makes my scalp feel tight. Within a few days, roots start to come in, a welcome relief from the outer-space prissiness of almost-white hair.
Over dinner, as I'm complaining about the general reaction to the new me as "unrecognizable," an old friend stops me. "It's not that you seem like a different person. It's that I haven't really looked at your face in a while," he says. "This makes me do that. That's what people are reacting to."
RED
Or more precisely, copper. In the world of hair color, I've learned, red is the most difficult hue to achieve. The pigment is bigger than other dye molecules and doesn't penetrate as deeply, so when you shampoo (especially in hot water, which swells and opens the cuticle), you risk literally washing your red down the drain. Viveiros paints on a gold base to keep the red from going pink when it fades, then a round of a thick red dye that feels menthol-y on my skin, followed by two red glosses to layer the color variation. When we're finished, Viveiros assesses me. "I never noticed your eyes are green," he says. They're not, but color-wheel magic is real: Against my new shade—"Irish Setter," Viveiros tells me: "They're beautiful dogs"—my eyes are flashing hazel. I'm sent on my way with detailed advice: Always use cold water. Splash after shampooing. Save the prolonged rinse for after conditioner. Because bleached hair (and underneath this color, that's what I have) stretches when wet and is more prone to breakage, only brush it dry. And mask for 15 minutes once a week.
I'd underestimated how invested my peers were in me as a blonde. "No!" yells a coworker. "Not my favorite," says another. (Did I ask?) "What have you done?!" says the mailwoman. One editor calls it "the death of sex." Another tells me that everyone is now going to think I want to have sex "constantly."
In the bathroom, I'm mournfully inspecting my head when a fellow red-dye sojourner pops out of a stall: "Fresh dye?" I nod meekly. "It'll mellow." I email all the gingers I know for styling tips. Orangey blush. Lots of eyeliner. Jewel tones. I feel like a cartoon.
Despite my attempts at bravado, I'm so insecure that I postpone two dates (procured as a blonde) and hide at my parents' house. It's only on a seaside vacation that things start to click. By 12 days in, the color has seriously faded. Streaked by sun and salt, the red softens to a rose-gold tone that is, dare I say, rather pretty with white sundresses and turquoise jewelry.
DARK BROWN
The last step is a dark ash brown—ash, Viveiros says, is the polite way of saying there's no red in the hair. Fine by me! The color is espresso, about three shades from goth. Despite Viveiros's gentle genius, light breakage has set in, so I'll need to handle all things hair-related with kid gloves: Wash rarely, mask frequently, and rely on dry shampoo. Going from light to dark is easy, it turns out; it takes only about an hour to be painted, rinsed, and done. I turn to the mirror—and see a version of my mother, who, with her natural, almost-black hair and hazel eyes, is a babe. Viveiros reminds me that beneath this dark topcoat, my hair is still platinum. I'll need periodic coats of gloss to refresh it—about a 30-minute commitment every few weeks.
But even now, back in my dark-chocolate comfort zone, in my dreams I'm a blonde. When Viveiros asks which shade suited me best, I tell him the first, the child at the beach. He nods. "It was always you in there. But with that color, you came alive." He pulls a page torn from a magazine deep out of his drawer. The face is covered, but the hair is a perfect surfer bleached blond with the lightest of ash-brown undertones. "I found your color, when you're ready," he says. And as soon as he gives my stressed strands the go-ahead, I'm there.
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